Post navigation

Rainbow Collection 85: The END of RCmixtapes

Today, I present to you the final installment of the Rainbow Collection Mixtapes (www.RCmixtapes.com). I have started this urban mixtape/compilation series in 2006 and in this time I have had the pleasure to create 85 tapes, 7 special edition tapes and 4 Music Video DVD’s totalling 2300+ tracks.

Initially I started creating the tapes as a playlist for myself and shared them with friends and family. I was already spending a lot of time searching for new music, downloading and properly tagging tracks and creating playlists. So why not share them? In the beginning I used the mixtape format where tracks would flow-over into each other. However, this required you to play all tracks in order so I switched it up to be more of compilation album than a pure mixtape.

After a while my friends were listening in every month and they passed it on to their friends (originally on CD and mp3). The original audience left but a new audience came in via friends of friends and suddenly RCmixtapes was downloaded worldwide. Before I stopped tracking download locations, RCmixtapes was downloaded in more than 75 countries.

Due to obvious issues with copyright, RCmixtapes has always been released for free and I never was able to do proper promotion. However even without promotion, new people were listening in every month purely based on word-of-mouth and I have received alot of positive feedback via FB/Website/Email. So what is the reason to stop now after 9 years?

First off, I still love searching for new urban music. Visiting different websites and forums, looking at blogs and charts trying to find new tracks. I started when I was still a student and had alot of free time. Due to life in general, I don’t have the time anymore to spend hours searching for new music and putting together the tape, properly tagging it etc. (I already switched up the monthlyformat to a bi-monthly format).

The second reason is that there is less of a need to create such a compilation as RCmixtapes. With the come-up of streaming services it is becoming easier and easier to find and listen to new music, without spending hours tracking all website/blogs and tagging music and truly believe that this is a good movement. Music used to be expensive, now we can pay a fixed fee to enjoy all the music we want. There is no reason anymore to say that music is too expensive.

I personally love the streaming movement and I am currently a TIdal User, and in the future I might publish a playlist on one of these services. However I dislike that alot of music is Apple/Tidal/Spotify Exclusive and that mixtape songs are not available on such streaming services. So at this time I still use a combination of streaming and downloading and I hope that we can switch to a proper full streaming service soon which contains both mainstream as well as underground music.

Again, I enjoyed my time creating these tapes. I have alot of good memories linked to various of these tapes. Chances that if you are reading this, than you have enjoyed them too. You might have been there since the beginning, or you might have downloaded your first tape last month, I thank you for all your support. I will try to make the older tapes available for a limited time, see separate blog post on the website. Fun Fact: There a lot of different artists featured on Rainbow Collection, but Lil Wayne is definitely the most recurring one, appearing on EVERY tape. Now you can guess my favorite artist ;-).

Rainbow Collection 85 will be the final tape released in this format. Please enjoy it. If you have questions / remarks, you can put a comment on the website, facebook group or email me (cshadow at gmail dot com).

Thanks, Ryan

–
Download the final tape below (Please try the first link)Download RC 85

Hey man, I just wanna say thanks for providing these tapes for so long. I don’t even remember how I found out about to mixtapes haha, I was just wondering who you followed and on what streaming devices to hear good new underground music, thanks again man.